


Lost Cause

by aam5ever



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Lots of conflict, drug usage, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 03:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3594303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aam5ever/pseuds/aam5ever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessica Bell is unhappy. She is trying to pinpoint why, and is so confused, that she believes that becoming the complete opposite of herself will fix it all. That no caring will fix it all...</p>
<p>Amy's mission is finding her before something bad happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost Cause

**Author's Note:**

> Friendship is a bond that is breakable. It is one of the most protected breakable chains in the world. Being without it can cause a person to spiral out of control. Hold onto that chain when you know the friendship isn't one to mess with.

I was fed up with my hair. I hated it. The damn thing always got in my way, and people touched it, touched it, touched it. I don't like people touching me. They think that it's a connection. I think it's just a nuisance.

My hands shook as they took up the scissors. The house was silent, my parents at their separate jobs. Working along, in their little cubicles. Taking orders, yet feeling in control... how do they do that? How have they not realized the fools they were being?

Snip, snip, snip. Snip all the troubles away. A snip for my mom, a snip for my dad, a snip for my ex, and one last snip for my future. Troublesome, all of them. Maybe another for Amy, my best friend. She tends to be annoying at times. More for my school, more for my straight A's, more, more, more!

I look at myself in the mirror. A black girl with hair cut short and straight stared back at me. My pink lips formed a smile that most would call devilish, but I would call progressive. Time to find a fitting wardrobe. 

My tall leather boots were just being put on when the door opened. Mother and father stumbled through, screaming my name. Overprotective pricks. I wasn't answering their calls for a reason. They didn't care about me. They cared about how embarrassing it would be to have a daughter dead because of their carelessness.

"Jessica!" Mother called. I calmly slid on my last boot and opened my bedroom door.

"Yes, mother?" I bellowed, the singsong in my voice obviously mocking. "Even though I prefer a different name for you to call me."

They stared at me, eyes scanning every feature I had personally reinvented. Hair fixed, to the best of my ability. Midriff showing from a tight black top, and dark jeans accompanied by black boots and eyeliner. My pink lips were colored in purple, dark enough to match the cloud over my mind. This is how it's supposed to be. Don't let these strangers get to you. Nobody knows you.

"Jessica, your hair..." My mother reached out, hands cold as it brushed against my ear and shortened locks. I moved my head away, and a flash of hurt was present in her eyes. It didn't matter. Weren't they just saying how my grades were the most important thing? Why did how I look matter so much to them?

"Don't call me Jessica." I spoke with purpose. "It's a lost name. A lost name given to a lost cause." I saw them give each other looks of confusion. "My name's School to you." 

Father looked annoyed. "Jess, I don't know what stunt you're pulling-"

"It's not a fucking stunt!" I yelled. 

"Watch your tone!"

"You watch yours when talking to a ticking time bomb!" My hands were balled into fists. "Don't act like you care about anything more than the family that judges you. I'm too young to judge you. I'm just the age to be your trophy. Prove that your sex was worth profit." Things that I thought about whirled in my mind, ready to be shot like bullets from my mouth.

Father stepped closer, hand grabbing my already-too-tight top. He lifted me to the tip of my toes, and my mother's worried cries of his name didn't phase our glares at each other. "What did you say to me, little girl?" 

"Sex." I spat out. "What, is that word too vulgar for your liking?" He gripped my shirt tighter. Daddy had a bit of a temper today. "I'm sorry that I'm not the perfect child that you wanted me to be. I'm sorry I put a wedge in your plans. A kink in your chain." A growl escaped father's throat. Could I make this turn into a temper tantrum? "I cut my hair and change my clothes, and now you want to hit me. I say a few words, express myself, and you've got me by the collar. I guess we know how daddy wants his little girls to stay, huh?" I shifted my gaze to mother. A quiet woman, but not by choice. "Silent."

Boom goes the dynamite.

My cheek stung with the slap I was delivered after being dropped ever-so-rudely. The sound rang out through the halls, and I couldn't help but smile, move my jaw a little, and look back at the man. 

"Now how good did that feel?" I continued to push every button I could, like a child would on an important piece of machinery. "Hitting your own flesh and blood. Oh, it felt good for me... I'm a masochist for this shit. Love the pain. Addicted to it." A single tear slipped down mother's cheek. "It's why I stayed so dormant for so long. The pain fed me."

Walking out of the house with nothing but twenty dollars and a zip-up black hoodie, I braced myself against the late March breeze and knew just where to find a scene for a cigarette craving sixteen year old.

\---

I rang the doorbell for the fifth time. Jessica, Jessica, Jessica... where have you gone? I rang you once, twice, three times... you know how nervous I get. You're always so reckless. Reckless, reckless, reckless... I can't stand it sometimes, but I wouldn't dare say that to you. You're my friend, I don't want to lose a friend.

Please tell me I haven't lost you.

Ms. Bell opened the door. "Y-yes?" She looked upset at something. Her husband was behind her, looking at me disapprovingly before disappearing back into the house. He never liked me. Never, never, never... I just can't understand why.

"I'm, uh..." I stuttered, like usual, in front of the adult. "Have you seen Jessica?"

The question seemed to strike something in her. What did I do? Did I do something bad? "She... left, half an hour ago..." The woman then seemed to have watery eyes. Suddenly, she beckoned me closer. I did so, and she took my shoulder, whispering, "I don't know what's wrong with her. Do you? She's worrying me... she acted up earlier like I've never seen-"

"Rosemary!" Mr. Bell called from inside. "I need you!"

The call that she heard seemed to make Mrs.Bell shiver. "Please, find her..." She backed up from me. "If anything happens to her-"

"Rosemary, now!"

"I-I'll try my best, Mrs. Bell." I promised. She nodded before mouthing a thank you and closing the door.

As I walked away from the door, I heard a heavy amount of yelling coming from the Bell house. Yelling, screaming, yelling... what had I just gotten into? 

Walking back down the street, I took out my phone once more. I quickly went to my text messages, and saw nothing new. I narrowly missed a biker as I reread the messages she sent me the night before.

Jessica:  
Amy, I can't do this anymore. I don't feel myself.

Me:  
Why? What can't you do anymore?

Jessica:  
It's just too much... I have so much pressure on me... I have to get away from it... 

Me:  
Jess, you're scaring me. Can you calm down and tell me what's going on?

Jessica:  
I can't. 

Me:  
Jessica, explain. Please...

Me:  
Jess?

Me:  
JESS!

I bit the nail of my thumb, chewing on it as I folded my arm under my chest. It was a cool day of March... she couldn't possibly be at the park we hang out in, right? We agreed to wait until April...

Unless she's with those others that hang out there.

Reckless, reckless Jessica...

\---

"I didn't know you smoked, goody-goody." The girl, a senior while I was only a junior in high school, smirked. 

I took the cigarette and acted as if I knew what I was getting myself into. It's not like I haven't smoked before. I just hadn't done it willingly. "You don't know my story, now do you?" I dared to say back, inhaling the smoke. It burned, but I held it in before letting it out slowly. Maybe I'll get used to this. Maybe this'll kill me faster so I won't have to do it myself.

The other person, a senior boy who had hair to platinum blonde for his skin tone, laughed. "Look who's a bit snippy today." He then raised an eyebrow. "Why hang out with the outcasts, goody-goody?"

Another inhale. Exhale. "Is there a rule against it?"

"Nah," The girl, who's name I recall being Sharon, took in her own smoke. She exhaled it as if she was exhaling her troubles. "we're just damn curious." When can I learn how to care as little as her? To let go as much as her? "You're not one who we assumed had fuckin' demons."

The comment strummed a little tune in me. Demons. That's what I had. "Well, you know what they say about assuming." Inhale, exhale. If I could exhale my life away, and I'll be the most thankful girl anyone's ever seen.

"Jessica!" Someone shouted from behind me. I knew the voice. Timid, but determined to help. Unsure, yet sure of her loyalty to what's right. An angel among demons. An angel among my demons.

"What do you want, Amy?" I shouted back. She was a ways away, but started making up the distance as she ran towards me. Why she was wearing a yellow dress with nothing but a hoodie over it was beyond me, but I had no place to say anything about it. 

She stopped near me, eyes scanning every bit of my features once I turned. Her eyes were beginning to water, her slender hand covering her mouth. "What did you do to yourself?" 

"I changed." I said simply, taking a drag of my cigarette.

Now her attention was turned to that. "...what-what are you doing? Are you- I can't believe..." She fumbled over her words.

I called her out on it. "Can't get the words out, can you?" I knew I shouldn't have done it, knowing she was sensitive about it. What was wrong with me? Amy didn't do anything to me. She was one of the only ones that cared.

The simple question I asked caused her to tear up even more. "You- you know I can't, you... you... you ass!" She yelled. The wind blew her dress every which way, and I knew she felt cold without a hat covering her bald head, or socks for her short boots.

"Go away, Amy." I instructed her blandly, as if I didn't care as I inhaled smoke once more. It was the best way to cut ties. To get her to leave me alone. If you pretend to be numb, if you pretend you don't care, they won't bother you. Let your emotions be hidden in plain sight.

Exhale.

She began to run closer, and we were suddenly within the same square foot. Amy grabbed the cigarette out of my hand and threw it in the short, yellow grass, stamping it out with the heel of her boot. Tears began to spill over her eyes, and I stood there, surprised she was so bold.

Sharon, who I had almost forgotten was there, spoke up. "Look who's got her panties in a bunch..." She then looked at the boy next to her, and pointed to a different tree nearby. "Let's watch from a safe distance." They left me with Amy. I knew they would, yet somehow, I sort of was hurt by their abandonment.

"Wh-what do you think you're doing?" Amy yelled, blue eyes glaring into my brown ones. "Do you care about yourself? Care about that that cigarette is going to do to you?" She was hitting all the wrong chords with me. "People don't want you to go down th-the wrong path, and it's like... it's like you want to do all the da- the damn wrong things! Do you see what you're doing to yourself?"

I've never yelled at Amy. I was always the passive one, the one who argued without ever raising their voice when it was between me and her. "Maybe you should shut the fuck up and mind your own God damn business when you don't know the whole story! Who said I wanted to look after myself, and who said my fuckin' family cares about me personally?" I don't know what happened.

And then she did something I never thought she would've. Amy took me by the shoulders and pushed me, with the force I never knew she had, against the tree behind me. She was keeping me there, pinned, as she answered back. "A-and who the flying FUCK said your parents were the only ones that cared?"

\---

I don't know why I did it. I really don't. I could've hurt her, could have really hurt her... but I was just so angry that I pushed her against the tree and held her there. The tension between us was palpable, but I didn't care. I wanted her to get it through her thick skull that she was being unreasonable, at least.

Jessica looked angry at first, and then something happened. She looked scared. Scared, and teary eyed. Scared, frightened Jessica then hugged me, and I immediately melted into it, and I hugged back. I stroked her back and short hair as she held me tight and wet my shoulder with her tears.

"I- I..." She couldn't get any of the words out that she needed to, and I let her take her time.

I couldn't help but make a small joke. "Look wh-who's the one struggling with... with words now, huh?" I felt my own tears slip down my pale cheeks, but nothing was compared to the bawling she was doing against me. Jessica laughed a little at the joke I told before slowly retracting her grip on me and looking at me again. Her dark face was a bit red, her eyes puffy and leaving trails of eyeliner down her cheeks and, most likely, on my hoodie.

"I'm... I'm so sorry..." She said in between hiccups. "I have... so much to... to tell you..."

I nodded, understanding. What has she gotten into? "Well?" I sat on the grass right then and there, gesturing for her to do the same, once she did, I took one of her hands into both of mine. 

"I'm-I'm all ears."

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: aam5ever  
> The inspiration for this fic was my own hardships (note: I personally did not go through anything Jessica had) and Amy representing the good things that will listen and will attempt to uplift and help.


End file.
